In Song of the Open Sea, her fifth collection, Joanne Morency explores a more inclusive voice that moves from a sense of individual grief to collective freedom from all human experiences of separation. Includes the original French en face.

This light in the palm, when we had given up hope. These colours expanding without fading. All things, suddenly, seem to recognize one another.

A white goose on a white backdrop…And we relive our first heartbeat. The glass is gone between self and world. A continent we had thought so distant is moving through us.

“Joanne Morency’s new title Song of the Open Sea deals with survival in the face of separations, a follow-up to her magnificent Le corps inachevé, about the death of her mother.”
~ Mario Cloutier, La Presse, April 2014

“A collection that avoids the perils of overly candid emotion and that lets us hear a sound like a foghorn, whose echo continues to reverberate after the book has been set down.”
~ Jacques Paquin, Lettres québécoises, Winter 2014

Joanne Morency lives on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Quebec. She has published four poetry collections with Montréal’s Éditions Triptyque and two books of haibun (poetic prose and haiku) with Ottawa’s Éditions David. She has received several awards including the 2015 CBC poetry prize and the 2010 award for a first collection in Paris.

Jill Varley’s studies in literature and languages have taken her to the University of Regina, Université Laval, and Montréal’s McGill and Concordia Universities. She holds a Masters in English Literature and is currently completing her Masters in Translation Studies. She is pleased to be publishing her first literary translation.